Hawaii judge who blocked travel ban target of threats

Carrie Doyle | March 25, 2017, 0:42

Hawaii judge who blocked travel ban target of threats

A federal judge in Virginia ruled Friday against blocking President Trump's executive order that called for temporarily stopping the entry of immigrants from six majority-Muslim nations and refugee admittance overall.

Trump has said the ban is necessary to protect the country from terrorist attacks, but his first order was halted by a federal judge in Seattle and a U.S. appeals court in San Francisco due to concerns it violated the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against religious bias.

However, rather than attempting to write a third executive order on the issue, Trump seems likely to take the case to the Supreme Court if the ban remains halted.

But she did not elaborate on the investigation. Trenga did note that the intent of the President's order can be examined: "T$3 he Court rejects the [administration's] position that since President Trump has offered a legitimate, rational, and non-discriminatory objective stated in EO-2, this Court must confine its analysis of the constitutional validity of EO-2 to the four corners of the Order".

Watson's ruling, which applies nationwide, means people from six Muslim-majority countries and refugees will be able to travel to the US.

The new ban was announced this month.

Both bans suspended the US refugee program for 120 days.

"The illogic of the Government's contentions is palpable", Watson wrote in his ruling.

Trenga's ruling doesn't have an immediate effect on the ban, which was put on hold by federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland last week. It did not survive Watson's.

The U.S. Marshals Service has flown in about a dozen deputies from the mainland to provide 24-hour protection to the federal judge whose order blocked the president's travel ban from taking effect.

"The fact that the White House took the highly irregular step of first introducing the travel ban without receiving the input and judgment of the relevant national security agencies strongly suggests that the religious objective was primary and the national security goal, even if legitimate, is a secondary, post hoc rationale", Chuang wrote.